Cult Movie Review: Solaris (1972)

Andrei Tarkovsky’s Solaris (1972) has often been termed one the greatest science fiction films ever made, and for good reason. 

This Russian film is not merely the tale of a strange alien encounter on a distant space station, but -- according to scholar Peter Wagstaff in Border Crossing: Mapping Identities in Modern Europe -- “a pre-text for reflections on man’s roots on Earth, his place in the God’s world, and his spirituality. Identity, home and attachment to our loved ones form the key themes to the film, for this is what makes us human….”

In exploring these powerful ideas, the film’s unshakable mood is one of “a subtly disquieting sci-fi ambience,” according to critic Paul Meehan (Tech-Noir: The Fusion of Science Fiction and Film Noir. McFarland, 2008, page 135.)

In terms of specifics, Solaris explores the notion of “guests” or “visitors” created by an alien planet. Despite their origin, these visitors seem human and familiar, but can’t be…at least not according to our understanding of the universe. 

So then, how to treat them? 

As memories manifested in the flesh?

As sentient and individual beings modeled on our memories but now walking a new path, and therefore forging a new identity?

Or as -- simply -- Monsters from the Id? As embodiment of guilt, shame, and remorse?

This notion of inscrutable alien beings appearing in human guise for unfathomable purposes has proven to be one of the most enduring in the modern science fiction canon, from TV stories such as Space:1999’s “Matter of Life and Death” to movies like Event Horizon (1997) and Contact (1997).

After a fashion, however, Solaris and all these other similar stories get at an essential truth about mankind: We can’t really conceive of something truly alien. 

Instead, when we explore space, we are actively seeking to find reflections or images of mankind and his earthbound experiences.

This view-point, says Solaris, is limiting.  

We can’t grapple effectively with the mysteries of the universe because we have not yet grappled with the mysteries of our own identities and morality.

In the future space age, psychologist Kris Kelvin (Banionis) is tasked with visiting the alien world Solaris, and learning what has happened to the space station crew observing it.  

If he discovers that the planet is dangerous to human life, Kelvin can either remove the station from orbit and cease all “Solaristic” research or bombard the strange alien world with radiation in hopes of negating its strange influence over the human mind.

After saying goodbye to his father on Earth, Kelvin journeys to the space station and finds the disturbed scientists there bedeviled by strange “guests,” physical manifestations from their human memories.  

Kelvin’s own guest soon appears too: his long-dead wife, Hari (Bondarchuk). 

Hari’s presence threatens Kris’s sanity but also his very sense of morality. 

Are these guests created by Solaris actually living people -- shadows of half-forgotten memories -- or some other heretofore unexpressed element of human conscience?  

And why has Solaris sent them?

Is it an attempt to communicate, or something else?

On the surface, the brilliant, open-ended, Russian science fiction epic Solaris concerns mankind’s reckoning with an alien world, and its coruscating, planet wide ocean.  

Scrape the surface, however, and the Tarkovsky film also revolves around humanity’s steadfast inability to understand something “different.”

This is a result of a peculiar brand of selfishness, Solaris intimates. As mankind gazes upon any object or person, he sees only echoes of familiar experiences or memories.

Thus, we are intrinsically self-centered beings.

This notion is deliberately expressed in a line of dialogue in the film, repeated in the 2002 remake, which suggests: “We don’t need other worlds. We need a mirror.”

How then, can we contextualize something that originates far away, and boasts a psyche or soul utterly unrelated to us and our experience here on terra firma?

Solaris suggests that such communication between human and alien is not truly possible. This conclusion about man’s inadequacy in the face of alien discovery is borne out in the film’s dialogue.  

“Everything we know about Solaris is negative,” says one scientist.  

 

“Everything has been confusing or incomprehensible,” declares another. 

Even in the scientists’ attempt to understand Solaris’s “psychology,” personal, human assumptions sneak in.  

“It has something to do with conscience,” concludes Gibarian.  

That’s his assumption based on his personal feelings of conscience, isn’t it? 

He concludes that the mystery of Solaris involves morality, because he questions his own morality.  

Again, he is seeing through a lens that he can’t escape, or even, truly, recognize.

In accordance with Gibarian’s remark, some scholars have described the film as kind of “inner quest” to find the path that allows an “ethical person to develop.” (The Routledge Companion to Philosophy and Film). 

But this is just one interpretation of the film themes, based on one character’s interpretation of the strange events.

I would suggest that Solaris’s real point is more opaque than that. Because man is ill-equipped to countenance a world or universe that does not include him at it its center, man instead seeks to destroy that which he doesn’t understand, or somehow transform it into an acceptable reflection, thereby destroying its essential “otherness.”  

Kelvin’s actions in the film support this theory. 

Part of his mission involves, essentially, lobotomizing Solaris with radiation if it proves to be dangerous to mankind.  But what does “dangerous to mankind” really mean? 

That the planet shows man something about himself that he doesn’t understand, or rather would not see?  

Is it dangerous to man, intrinsically, to be faced -- in the flesh -- with the consequences of his actions?  With the people he hurt, or was hurt by?

Accordingly, at the film’s denouement Kelvin broadcasts his brain encephalograms at Solaris, and it quickly re-shapes itself into a vision from his past, his home.  

Islands of Kelvin’s memory ascend from the planet-wide sea in patterns that conform to his (apparently subconscious) desire to return home. Once more, the truly alien is replaced by something human-oriented, something familiar. 

Kelvin has gotten his mirror, and yet he still can’t accept it totally, because his psyche can’t understand its nature.  But his urge here is undeniable: to kill that which is different and make it a “mirror” of his life.

What makes the events on the space station so terrifying to Kelvin and the others is that there is no way of deducing Solaris’s intent regarding the manifestation of the human-looking “guests.”  

Man’s science can’t determine the agenda, or even the nature of these guests. 

Are Hari and the other visitors alive in the sense that Kelvin is alive?  Even if they are formed only by the colored, personal memories of those who knew them on Earth, do these beings have souls, and therefore possess the spark of life?  

If so, Kelvin is a murderer because he dispatches the first “guest” version of Hari in a space pod, consigning her to eventual death in space. 

Again, the notion arises that man is so afraid of something he doesn’t immediately understand that his first response is to kill that thing.

Worse than that, the guests represent an unresolvable spiritual crisis. How can we be certain that we aren’t all but the sentient “memories” of other beings -- of God himself -- walking this planet, living this life? 

The “truth” about Hari exposes the truth of our existences too.  

We don’t know that we are any more “real” than she is.

Viewers also learn in the course of Solaris that the guests began to appear when the station first bombarded the planet with X-Rays. And secondly that the “guests” are made of neutrinos -- not atoms -- held stable by some force on the planet Solaris.  

One might thus conclude that Solaris sought contact after being contacted first (with the X-Rays) by man, and did so in a manner it thought would be comprehensible to humans.  

But the “guests” represent an imperfect or cracked mirror, and what they reflect upon the human characters is the unsettling sense that it is impossible for a human being to really know another human being.  

Therefore, Hari is not Hari, but a simulacrum originated in Kelvin’s (perhaps faulty) memory of her.  

Such ideas get to the very heart of what it means to exist, to be sentient, and to boast an individual soul. 

Can an alien being or planet reproduce those things which man holds to be the product and providence of divine creation?  

When confronted with such questions, Kelvin and the others want to look away, or squash that which is different and threatening to their self-centric beliefs about humanity and the universe.  

If Solaris can recreate us, down to our souls, of what use have we for God? 

And what use would God have for us?

Eventually, Kelvin comes to realize and accept that he can have Hari back in some form, but again, more questions arise from her presence.  

Can Solaris take away loss and give back love?  

Or is it providing only a facsimile of love? 

Is loving Hari a meaningful and true act, or a willful act of self-delusion?

“Man needs man,” one character asserts in the film, and that conclusion is simply another way of stating that we can’t encounter something truly alien, at least not when our imaginations are so limited, and so dominated by feelings of fear.  

So what Solaris really explores is the idea that in observing something natural, beautiful and beyond our understanding, we actually change, and perhaps destroy that very thing.

Bolstered by lyrical visuals, Solaris doesn’t possess much by way of stereotypical science fiction imagery. Beyond the corridors and environs of the space station, there is very little in the film that one would recognize as conventional special effects or space age production design or technology.

Yet Tarkovksy provides unique, symbolic imagery which substitutes for this kind of de rigueur brand of sci-fi presentation. 

For example, the film opens with a shot of green plants waving and swaying in placid water. The plant-life -- coruscating ever so gently but also constantly -- suggests tendrils reaching out to touch something else, and that’s a solid metaphor for the planet Solaris.  

One gets the sense from this evocative visual of something alive, but also something diffuse and eternal. 

The waves don’t stop lapping around the plants, and as the plants move, they don’t appear to possess an overt sign of individual intelligence or sentience.  

But there is some indication there -- in the repetition of the waves and the movement of the plants -- of some scale of non-human intelligence. There seems to be an order to it.

Later in the film, there is a long and apparently pointless scene of the astronaut Berton -- who has been to Solaris -- returning to the city by car.  

Tarkovsky’s camera follows the astronaut’s car through a conventional, labyrinthine, modern highway network at the foot of a major metropolis.  The scene goes on and on, beyond reason, beyond your patience, even, and is accompanied by weird sci-fi sound effects. 

Berton’s car darts through the darkness of long tunnels, and then comes into the light for several intervals. 

The scene also alternates between black-and-white and color photography.

This scene may prove baffling or be considered unnecessary to some audiences, but in another, wholly symbolic fashion, it seems to represent the ultimate unknow-ability of another person (or entity’s) mind, or sense of “truth.”  

There are occasions of light, punctuated by occasions of dark, and neuronal synapses (represented by the cars) seem to fire and move about at random, heading for unknown and unknowable destinations.

Tarkovsky’s use of color in the film hints beautifully at this unknowability. Film scholar Richard Misek writes that the film does not so much alternate between black-and-white and color as it “ebbs and flows through a range of chromatic alternatives.” 

Furthermore, he suggests that “Color floats through Solaris, unmoored from meaning.” (Chromaitc Cinema: A History of Screen Color, page 174.).

What this visual approach suggests then, is the infinite variability of memory. 

Sometimes we remember images of people vividly, and sometimes those images are not so strong. Our memories run the spectrum from black-and-white or sepia-tone to Technicolor. 

But if our memories are not as vivid, then can we create “accurate” representations of the people we know?  Solaris suggests, through its use of color, that we can’t.  Instead, we create facsimiles, just as Solaris seems to create facsimiles.

This painterly approach to film has been duly noted by critics including Desson Howe, who writes: 

“Tarkovsky doesn't script so much as paint and compose; his work is a collection of living paintings, or visual symphonies, rather than narrative movies. Though "Solaris" is one of the late director's most plot-coherent and accessible films, its plot is still a mere conduit for mood, atmosphere and philosophy. With cinematographer Vadim Yusov's deft eye, Tarkovsky also creates some incredible images…His pictures, and his sounds -- such as the symphonic drip of raindrops in a wooded pond -- tell more than just the immediate story; they rejuvenate the mind.” (The Washington Post, June 1, 1990.)

Perhaps Solaris’s inaugural image -- of the almost serene, eternal water -- represents the planet Solaris, and the busy, complex light-and-dark highway of Russia represents the human mind, always on the hunt for answers, always looking for another route to understanding or knowledge. One can detect how these images, and these thought processes – eternal and placid vs. eternally busy -- contrast one another, yin-and-yang like.

No matter the particular interpretation Solaris, based on the novel by Stanislaw Lem, is a dazzling and memorable science fiction film, and one of the ten best genre movies of the 1970s.  While many great films imagine what the future will bring, or convincingly portray space battles in another galaxy, Solaris reminds us that when we go to outer space, we will still be human, and therefore saddled with all the same questions of morality and existence that we face now.  

In other words, in the space age we will travel a very long way to meet alien life, but when we finally countenance it, we will still want to see only ourselves in it.  We will still desire that mirror.

Saturday Morning Flashback: Land of the Lost: "Split Personality"

Watching the final episodes of Land of the Lost (1974 – 1977) Season Two, the intrepid viewer will experience the distinct sense that markers are being laid down; sign-posts that point towards a possible direction for Season Three.  

This was evident especially in “The Musician,” a story about Chaka’s evolution and mental acceleration.  

And it’s also evident in this week’s story, “Split Personality,” which finds the Land of the Lost interfacing – albeit uncomfortably – with an anti-matter version of itself.

When the two universes “grind” against one another, earthquakes result, and the anti-matter Holly makes contact with her matter universe doppelganger. The anti-matter version speaks through “our” Holly and comments, cryptically, about a fearsome “Black Sleestak.” 

Yet no black Sleestak is seen in this episode…or in any episode of Land of the Lost, for that matter.  So who, or what, is she talking about?  

It’s another one of those wonderful, ambiguous, almost throwaway lines that suggests something that could be, if a clever writer only follows up on it.  The inclusion of a line like that also suggests a much larger universe, and larger mythology around Altrusia.  I’ve always been kind of bummed that Season Three didn’t pick up on many of these hints and mysteries.

Reviewing “Split Personality,” I’m also impressed with the series’ sense of continuity.  Here, Will mentions events from “Album,” the first season story in which the Sleestak created a false image of his mother in hopes of snaring the family.  Such touches are expected today, of course, but in the mid-1970s such references seemed almost revolutionary.

“Split Personality” also continues the series through-line that indicates Holly is more sensitive or “open” to experiences in the Land of the Lost then her family members. Here, she is contacted by her other self, and able to communicate with that self.  This season has been an especially strong one for Holly, Land of the Lost’s revealing her maturity in the face of some pretty tough, scary situations.  Alas, Will seems developmentally-arrested at his hyper, obnoxious older-brother stage.  When I was growing up, Will was always my favorite character, but this time around, I can see how much care has been given to develop Holly.

In terms of set design, “Split Personality” is also ingenious.  Rick and Will come upon their anti-matter counterparts in a strange, glowing cave.  Because the two “worlds” came in contact at odd angles, everything is askew.  A matrix table is seen standing not on the floor as we expect, but jutting horizontally out of a wall.   Land of the Lost is a low budget kid’s series, but the production designers really worked over time and came up with imaginative visuals that seemed indicative of a consistent -- if bizarre -- universe.

Gremlins Poseable Stripe Figure (LJN; 1984)

Straight from LJN (the company that also held the license to create toys from the movie Dune...), comes this 1984 retro-toy treasure: the Gremlins Poseable Stripe Figure. 

Toothy and imposing, Stripe stands at over a foot tall, has poseable limbs (and claws...), beady red eyes, and on his blue box is this legend: "WARNING: YOU MUST OBEY ALL MOGWAI RULES!"

Of course, this monstrous creature (the figure designed for ages 3 and up...) is from one of the most controversial genre blockbusters of 1984 (the same summer of Ghostbusters, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom and Star Trek III: The Search for Spock.) 

Basically, Joe Dante's horror movie featured much violence (like a suburban mother sparring with a violent Gremlin in her kitchen...) yet the film was still aimed at children....the market that had appreciated E.T. 

Steven Spielberg was the executive producer and his clout was such that the movie (along with Indiana Jones) got a new rating "PG-13" instead of R. Basically, the M.P.A.A. created an entirely new ratings classification just to stay on the director's good side...

Anyway, this is indeed the figure of the malevolent Stripe, leader of the nasty gremlins, or Mogwai. 

The side of the box reminds us of the dangers of owning Mogwai by reciting the movie's warning. To paraphrase: Keep 'em out of water; Keep 'em out of light (sunlight is fatal...), and don't feed these buggers after midnight.

On the back fo the box, there's a Gremlins "Proof of Purchase" worth three points, and an admonition to "collect the entire line of Gremlins toys from L.J.N." 

These include the: "3 piece collectible gift set; wind-up Gizmo and Stripe; small Poseable Gizmo; Bendable Stripe; Large Poseable Gizmo; Large Poseable Stripe" and "Stripe and Gizmo Water Hatchers." 

As for me, I had this bugger, the Bendable Stripe, and the Large poseable Gizmo. But this is the only one that I still have the box for.

Also on the back of the box is an array of photos showing how a kid can "have fun making up your own Stripe costumes from accessories found at home." I'm sure Mom would appreciate you raiding her closet...

Gremlins 2: The New Batch (1990)

At a crucial juncture in Joe Dante’s Gremlins 2: The New Batch (1990), an agreeable if dopey millionaire -- an amalgamation of Ted Turner and Donald Trump – learns that if you create a place for things instead of people, you shouldn’t be surprised that things eventually live there.

Daniel Clamp (John Glover) thus comes to understand that his fancy Manhattan high-rise -- automated to the max and designed to sell, sell, sell -- ends up being a place not for human beings, but for gremlins. 

This is an explicit continuation of Gremlins’ (1984) technology critique, which I discussed here on the blog the other day.

We shouldn’t be surprised, the film suggests, when de-humanization actually de-humanizes us.  Play with the building blocks of life, like Splice of Life does, or put people under the thumb of 24-hour surveillance and security guards, or cook exclusively with microwave ovens….and people begin to behave…badly.

Monsters start popping up.

This social critique probably makes Gremlins 2 sound like a deadly serious film, but instead it’s a gag-a-minute, laugh-a-minute treat that skewers the modern age, circa 1990.  This is a time, the film tells us, when technology will either carry the day, making us all “monsters,” or humanity will re-assert itself.

Look up from your iPhone screen for a moment and tell me which side won that particular war.

Caustic and hilarious Gremlins 2 is also “inventive and explosive” according to The Christian Science Monitor’s David Sterritt, and “thoroughly enjoyable” according to Films in Review’s Edmond Grant. The film is much funnier than its predecessor was, though the trade-off may be difficult for horror films fans to accept.  

As brilliant and subversive as Gremlins 2 remains, it has lost some of the scary, suspenseful aspects of the original film. 

Yet I suspect the trade-off is ultimately worth it. How many sequels are so delightful, and so thoroughly unpredictable? 

“We hope you have enjoyed our programming. But more importantly, we hope you have enjoyed…life.”

Former Kingston Falls resident Billy Peltzer (Zach Galligan) and his girlfriend, Kate (Phoebe Cates) are having trouble adjusting to life in expensive, impersonal New York City.  In Manhattan, the duo works at the technologically-advanced but de-humanizing Clamp Center, the world’s first fully-automated office building and home to the Clamp News Network (CCN).  

After the death of Mr. Wing (Keye Luke Luke), Gizmo is taken to the Clamp Center by a scientist working at the Splice of Life genetic laboratories inside the building.  

Before long, Gizmo and Billy meet up again, and face another outbreak of malevolent Mogwai.

This time, the gremlins are enhanced by Dr. Catheter’s (Christopher Lee) genetic experiments.  The Gremlins soon add to their numbers with a brain gremlin, an electric gremlin, a vegetable gremlin (!), a bat gremlin, a spider gremlin and…a female gremlin.

“This is a complete failure of management.”

In America, we tend to worship those who introduce us to the next level of technology (and its accordant convenience) and make a fortune doing it. Gremlins 2 introduces us to the (great) character, Daniel Clamp, and it is impossible not to love him…but also impossible not to recognize him.  

He’s a little bit Ted Turner, who founded the nation’s first 24-hour news cable network and was a proponent of “colorization,” the expensive process by which old black-and-white films would be updated and made palatable for contemporary (but lazy…) TV-watching masses.  

Clamp is also a little bit Donald Trump (1946 - ), the increasingly unhinged man behind Trump Towers in New York City, Trump Tower Resorts (casinos and hotels…) and such best sellers as Trump: The Art of the Deal (1987) and Trump: Surviving at the Top (1990).

In Gremlins 2, Daniel Clamp (John Glover) is the self-absorbed dynamo behind Clamp Premiere Regency Trade Center, a high-tech sky-rise/headquarters and home to CCN: The Clamp Cable News Network. Clamp is the author of the best-selling I Took Manhattan, and his cable network airs Casablanca, “now in full color…with a happier ending.”

And when the Gremlins disaster occurs inside his building, Clamp even has a handy “end of the world” message to air on CCN, a funny reference to Turner’s famous boast that his CNN “won’t be signing off until the world ends.”

The social commentary doesn’t end with the (gentle) skewering of these powerful men, who helped to reshape modern America. The film also comments on the fragmenting or “balkanization” of television brought about by cable networks, a process which creates (in the film) “niche” networks like The Archery Channel, Microwaving with Marge, The Movie Police (starring Leonard Maltin), The Safety Channel and on and on.  

What’s the point?  

That technology (in this case the new shape of television) is merely separating us into our own little worlds, not building a community that reflects life, like Kingston Falls, for example. 

Today, we are some way down the line from Gremlins 2.  We not only have over 200 channels, we have Internet streaming, 24 hour cable stations, and a host of other viewing options.  The “glue” that the mass media once used to hold us together as a nation is now gone. You can now choose the news (like a pizza topping) that best reflects your already-established world-view (conservative or liberal) and never be exposed to a new concept, or something that takes you out of your comfortable bubble.

Dante delves into pop-culture movie references too, commenting on the 1989 blockbuster Batman with a Gremlin-sponsored recreation of the movie’s ubiquitous bat logo. He ushers in jokes about the Wizard of Oz (“I’m melting”), The Marathon Man (“is it safe?”), and even laments the fact that a sequel was made to…Gremlins. 

Once again, the point is that even our art is now de-humanized. 

Batman is now a brand name and trademark, with a corporate logo you can’t mistake.  Forget individual artistry, the Dark Knight is an institution, not a vehicle for inventive storytelling! Matters such as story and character are less important than the creation of a perpetual money dispensing machine.  We watch a superhero movie from Marvel these days, and after the credits are over, we get a tease for another character, or another movie.  Then, we wait months for the trailer for that next movie, and anticipation is ratcheted up.  The actual product – the “movie itself” -- is just one piece of a never-ending media/marketing strategy.

Gremlins 2 likewise mocks the de-humanized essence of business jargon, which had grown and multiplied in American culture by the 1990s like some sort of terrible verbal plague. Workers were no longer asked to come up with good ideas…they had to “think outside the box.” Workers were no longer charged with blending departments, but finding and exploiting their “synergy.” They no longer had to simply do better at their job; they had to “take it to the next level.”  

This kind of inhuman gobbledygook -- this business-speak -- is mimicked and expanded upon with great success in Dante’s film. For instance, the revolving doors at the Clamp Tower entrance remind workers to “have a powerful day!”  

Similarly, characters don’t discuss career aspirations, they reflect on “situational long term outlook perspectives” and “career opportunity advancement.” Even ceiling lights are no longer just lights they are part of an “illumination system.”

And a takeover of the building by malevolent green gremlins is not a catastrophe, a disaster or even an invasion according to some, but rather a failure of management. 

So the film tells us that to go along with our inhuman technology, we have developed inhuman modes of communication.

If one catalogues all of these pop culture jokes, a common thread grows detectable. What Dante laments in Gremlins 2 is the coarsening of the American arts and culture and even national dialogue to the point that everything and everybody is a product; a vehicle for squeezing out a profit. 

“When art and business join forces,” declares one character in Gremlins 2, “anything can happen.”  He means it as a net positive; but Dante means it sarcastically.

Gremlins 2 is prophetic in understanding the pitfalls of this modern approach.  

Have you been a success in real-estate?  

Write a book and proselytize your success!

Direct a successful movie?  

Market it and make a sequel!

Have a good idea for a restaurant?  

Franchise it! 

Yet in a culture where the all-mighty dollar is so important, qualities such as individuality and creativity – nay, artistry -- eventually lose their significance.  Clamp’s two-hundred-and-fifty million dollar high-rise, a monstrosity of mechanization, voice-operated elevators, self-cleaning ash trays, surveillance cameras and “eye-pleasing, color-coordinated, authorized art,” is not an environment fit for unique, individual human beings.  

Instead, it’s a big fat, high-tech “work”-extruding beast. 

The Gremlins -- the very embodiment of Loki; of chaos and anarchy – descend on Clamp Towers and very quickly prove…bad for business.  They get into the “natural” ingredients at the Yogurt Stand.  They destroy “Splice of Life,” a genetic laboratory that is the very representation of profit put ahead of responsibility and science run amok.  They foul the complicated phone system in the building, and in one wicked joke, are consigned to a hell called “hold,” where the muzak never stops.

Is it a wonder that monsters exist in a world like this?

  

Gremlins 2 is probably the closest thing to a live-action cartoon you are likely to see, but all the mayhem, all the brilliant effects carry pro-social weight.  The real movie monster is our craven consumer culture, and our desire to possess new, better technology. This monster is everywhere, infiltrating every walk of life.  It’s in our television (“an invention for fools,” says Mr. Wing), it’s in our newscast, here presented by a man in a vampire suit (a literal bloodsucker), and it’s in our most revered businessmen like Clamp, who still wants to merchandise Gizmo…even after all the anarchy.

What makes this point so interesting to contemplate is that Dante decides, in this sequel, to make the gremlins non-generic even as the world of humans becomes more generic. There’s not just a furry creature and an evil one here, like in the first film. Instead, we meet dozens of individual gremlins. There’s one little guy with googly eyes who acts like he needs Ritalin, stat. There’s Greta, the female gremlin. There’s one mogwai who becomes a gargoyle. And, of course, there’s my favorite, the delightful Brain Gremlin (voiced by Tony Randall), who wants only, “civilization.”  

Thus, the shape of the film might be interpreted as a mirror of the overall critique. To destroy a world of homogenized, inhuman technology and jargon, you need a return, perhaps, to messy individualism.  The Gremlins -- funnier, and more colorful than ever -- provide that antidote.

Gremlins 2 is wicked good fun, and one sequel that not only differentiates itself from the original, but in some way, exceeds it. I watched both Gremlins films with my son, Joel, and he couldn’t decide which he liked better. He liked the original, he said, because it told a scarier, more suspenseful story.  He liked the sequel because it upgraded the monsters and was very, very funny.

In my assessment, Gremlins fits together better as a coherent central idea or movie, but Gremlins 2 takes the cake in terms of ingenuity and humor. In the final analysis, original or new batch matters little because the franchise provides viewers two remarkable films.

Gremlins (1984)

Joe Dante’s Gremlins (1984) is a brilliant and wickedly funny horror movie that concerns “corruption and violence beneath the surface of small-town American life,” according to William J. Palmer’s The Films of the Eighties: A Social History. 

Yet perhaps Gremlins’ greatest quality involves the fact that the film's central threat -- which Harlan Ellison once termed “The Muppet Chainsaw Massacre” -- can be analyzed or viewed in so many competing ways.

On the surface, of course, the film is all about a small, Norman Rockwell American town -- Bedford Falls -- overcome by violent mischievous critters at Christmas time. One might also view the film as a story of friendship involving a young man, Billy Peltzer (Zach Galligan) and his unusual pet, a Mogwai called Gizmo.

But peel back the onion a little bit, and one can detect how Gremlins might be read from any number of different view-points, or according to a variety of societal critiques. What's a bit amazing is that the film stands up to scrutiny no matter which lens one chooses to apply. 

One monster -- the diminutive, green-skinned, sharp-toothed Gremlin -- stands in, essentially, for many (cultural) monsters.

First, for example, there’s the ethnocentric/technophobic angle, which sees WWII veteran Mr. Futterman (Dick Miller), lamenting the rise of foreign imports, and suggesting that people should only purchase and trust American-made products.  

His (protectionist?) argument is essentially that foreign goods come replete with saboteur gremlins and should thus be avoided.  The Gremlins, essentially then, are the second coming of Pearl Harbor, an attack concocted by "foreigners" to bring America to its knees.

Since the Mogwai do originate with a dealer from the Far East according to the film’s narrative, there’s a certain plausibility to Futterman's stance, one might conclude. But this particular reading grows more complicated when one considers the fact that original masters/owners/care-givers of the same Gremlins are able to control them safely, without violent incident.  Why can’t Americans accomplish the same feat?   The Old Man, Mr. Wing, suggests that we are not ready to control Gremlins/technology. That we are not wise enough.

That the Gremlins are equated with new-fangled technology is established, in large part, by Jerry Goldsmith’s masterful score, which creates a conflict or dichotomy in terms of musical choices.  Much of the film is traditionally orchestral, creating an epic, lyrical sweep.  But the actual Gremlins Theme is electronic in nature, signaling the creatures' origin as something from modernity, from technology.

Also notice that a cold metallic hue is applied or seen in many of the scenes involving Gremlin attacks.  This color equates them either with electricity (again, a technological creation), or the blue static-y glow of television (another technological toy.)  The images below reflect this palette.

Secondly, there’s the economic angle, or critique in Gremlins. 

In Billy Peltzer’s America, the rich are getting richer, even if it means bank foreclosures for middle class families. At the same time, yuppies (represented by Judge Reinhold) reign supreme...plotting to be millionaires by thirty and bragging about their cable TV. Meanwhile, artists and other creative personalities, like Billy, are being shoehorned into “business” jobs that make them miserable. The pursuit of money has become everything -- the gold standard -- in this version of eighties America.

Significantly, absolutely everything is a commodity in this world as it is rendered, even the Gremlins themselves. Consider the old Grandfather’s (Keye Luke) horror upon hearing Mr. Peltzer’s description of Gizmo being “sold.”  It was really a scam, not a fair transaction, wasn't it? The Grandfather had no say in it, no choice.  

Similarly, Mr. Peltzer seems to view Gizmo primarily as a commodity, noting that he bets “every kid in America would like to have one….this could be the big one.” A unique, un-classified animal --  La life form -- is no more than a get-rich quick scheme. It's something that be used to help one acquire vast amounts of wealth.

The picture-perfect Rockwellian appearance of Bedford Falls -- deliberately likened in the body of the film with the cinematic world of It’s a Wonderful Life (1946) -- is thus a contrast to real life there. As Billy learns the hard way, the town is far astray from the American Dream. All the bells and whistles of the holiday season seem empty and cynical when the eighties equivalent of the Wicked Witch -- Polly Holliday’s Mrs. Deagle -- controls the bank, real estate, and the town itself.

Next up, one might consider the season portrayed in the film more closely. Gremlins might actually be considered a “gleeful trashing of everything America holds dear about Christmas,” according to author Mark Connelly in Christmas at the Movies (page 138). Specifically, the 1984 film seizes on the dark, unsettled emotions some people feel during ostensibly the most joyous time of the year.  Once more, Dante's film presents a powerful dichotomy: the appearance (of happiness) and the reality (danger and sadness).

For instance, Mrs. Deagle threatens to throw a family of renters out on the street, informing a mother (Belinda Balaski) and her children that they should wish for Santa Claus to pay the rent.  And late in the film, Kate (Phoebe Cates) shares a haunting story about a family Christmas gone horribly wrong. 

All the symbols of the holiday, ultimately, prove dangerous or threatening to Americans. The Peltzer family dog is strung up or hanged in Christmas lights. A Gremlin eats Christmas cookies and is killed in the blender along with the cookie dough…which turns green.  

And a Mogwai even hides inside a Christmas tree, ready to strike an unsuspecting suburban mother. Few Christmas “symbols” survive the movie intact. We get a dead Santa stuck in a chimney, Gremlin carolers, and more holiday-themed atrocities.

When I reviewed Gremlins in my book, Horror Films of the 1980s (2007), I considered the environmental aspects or argument of the film too. The film seems to concern, generally, how something innocent, beautiful and unspoiled (in this case Gizmo) can be perverted, or destroyed by its irresponsible use. The Gremlins are harmless creatures if a certain set of rules are applied and obeyed, but if those rules are ignored, the creatures become a hazard.

Yet when I screened Gremlins for the first time since 2007 last week with my eight year old son, Joel,  I noticed another aspect of the film I hadn’t really considered fully. On some level, the film seems to involve responsible parenting. 

Billy and Mr. Peltzer take stewardship of an innocent life: Gizmo. He will grow up to be happy, healthy and well-adjusted if the three Mogwai rules are obeyed. These rules are: no bright light, no water, and no feedings after midnight. 

All three rules are violated in short order, and the Peltzers soon find themselves contending not with innocent, cuddly babies, but rambunctious, mischievous creatures who crash cars, tear up the town, and make life miserable for them.

Being a father myself, it’s impossible for me not to view the film as an argument directed at irresponsible parents.  If you want to raise a kid “right” you have to establish responsible parameters (the equivalent of the film’s rules), and then stick to them. 

If you don’t do so, those babies don’t transform into green, scaly monsters, but they transform into something worse: irresponsible, defiant teenagers!  Before you know it, they are listening to loud music, drinking beer, and otherwise acting out. Your baby grows up in a terrible way because you couldn't be bothered to be consistent, or responsible. In the film, the Gremlins go on a rampage that is childishly excessive, like a teenager experiencing freedom for the first time.

Even the film’s discussion of television seems to reflect the parenting angle. Grandfather, or Mr. Wing, returns to find that his wayward child has been allowed to spend his time….watching television.  

And of course, TV is the most common babysitter in the world, right?  Essentially, Gizmo goes from being held in one box (which keeps him safe from the dangers of the world), to being captivated by another box -- the television -- that exposes him to those dangers, at least vicariously.

Gremlins is a manic, unruly film, and one of my all-time favorites The anarchic antics of the wee monsters grant the film its umbrella of unity, but also permit for a series of vignettes which shine a light (or reflect a crack’d mirror) on American life in the 1980s.  

Bruce G. Hallenbeck wrote of Gremlins in Comedy-Horror Film: A Chronological History that “there is a dark and subversive undercurrent that keeps viewers off-guard, wondering in which direction it will veer next.” (page 131)  This is a powerful observation, and helps to explain how one film can be viewed through so many different lenses

Or how one cute little guy like Gizmo can turn into a thousand ugly -- and relevant -- monsters.